Shizengaku: Project Update and Forthcoming London Events

We gave Project Shizengaku a Daiwa Foundation Award in the September 2011 round of funding and the project members will present a series of events, including exhibitions and performances, in London over two weeks ( 24th Feb-9 March 2013 ).  Project Shizengaku is  a collaboration between the Music Department of  Goldsmiths, University of London and Fine Arts Department of Seian University of Art and Design. Both of these universities have strong traditions of combining theory and practice, and this project will also interrogate that link itself, suggesting a possible division between ‘theory of practice’, ‘theory for practice’ and ‘theory as a kind of practice’. Shizengaku is the Japanese title of Aristotle’s Physics, and the project members investigate, through painting, sound art and theoretical illumination, issues arising from Aristotle’s separation of the natural world from the man-made. This fruitful collaboration  has already lead to an exhibtion from 11 August to 23 September 2012 at the Shiga Museum of Modern Art, two symposiums and a Monastic Choir Buddhist Chanting and Biwa concert.  More information about the Japan-side events can be found here .

The London events will start with an exhibition at St James Hatcham Church, Goldsmiths, University of London (23 February – 2 March 2013). The opening night on Saturday 23 February will feature The Dance-Sound-Visual Art Collaborative Show ‘Shizengaku’  at the same venue and there is another chance to see this show on 1 March 2013. Both performances are from 7:00pm.

There will be a second exhibition from 4 to  9 March 2013 at Menier Gallery (51 Southwark Street, London, SE1 1RU ) and The 2^nd International Symposium will be held on 1 March 2013, at the Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre, Goldsmiths.

More information can be found on the website http://www.gold.ac.uk/spr/project-shizengaku/ and a summary of the theoretical concept of the project taken from the website is given below:

“SHIZENGAKU is the Japanese title of Aristotle’s Physics, and it will investigate, through Painting, Sound Art and Theoretical illumination, issues arising from Aristotle’s separation of the natural world from man-made objects (is this true of Found Art? Sound Art? Nature Paintings?), his views on change in the physical world (the decay of our understanding of artworks?), his denial that chance events can be causes (the relevance of those ideas for our notions of creativity?), and his insistence – against the Atomists – that there can be no true voids in nature (are there no complete silences in music? no truly empty canvasses in art?). The project will further attempt to break open the connection between art and nature by juxtaposing two types of artifact (visual art and sonic music), two types of critical engagement (the practical and the theoretical), and two types of cultures (British and Japanese). ”